112 



KOTES AND QUERIES. 



[8''dg.Np82,,Au0. 9.'66. 



tient wheel," and has it any reference to the 

 election of officers for the borough ? From the 

 appearance of this curioijs figure, it seems to have 

 been printed aboyt the close of the seventeenth 

 century. Perhaps one of your Somersetshire 

 readers can throw light on the subject, and also 

 state whether any of the above-named persons 

 have descendants now living in JNJilborn Port ? 



Vox. 



Minat (^utviti Inttlb ^nSiatvA. 



What is their origin and 

 W.T. 



Apostle Spoons, 

 history ? 

 Oxford. 



[We believe the earliest notice of the apostle spoons 

 occurs in an entry on the books of the Stationers' Com- 

 pany in the year 1500, " A spoyne of the gyfte of Master 

 Reginoli Wolfe, all gylte with the pycture of St. John." 

 Mr. Pegge in his Preface to A Forme of Cary, a Roll of 

 Ancient Cookery, has offered the following conjecture as 

 to the origin of this baptismal present. He observes, 

 that " the general mode of eating must either have been 

 with the spoon or the fingers; and this, perhaps, m&y 

 have been the reason that spoons became the usual present 

 from gossips, to their god-children at christenings." The 

 practice of sponsors giving spoons at christenings seems 

 to have been first observed in the reign of Elizabeth ; 

 previously it was the mode to present gifts of a different 

 kind. Hall, ■yvho has written a minute account of the 

 baptism of Elizabeth, 1558, informs ns that the gifts pre- 

 sented by thp sponsors were a standing cup of gold, and 

 six gilt bowls, with covers. But in the first year of 

 Queen Elizabeth, Howes, the continuator of Stow's Chro- 

 nick, says that " at this time, and for many yceres before, 

 it was not the use and custome, as now it is [1631] for 

 godfathers and godmothers generally to give plate at the 

 Ibaptisip of children (as spoones, cups, and such like), but 

 only to give christening shirts, with little hands and cuffs 

 wrought either with silk or blue thread; the best of 

 them for chief persons weare edged with a small lace of 

 blacke silke and golde ; the highest price of which for 

 great men's children were seldom above a noble, and the 

 pommon sort two, three, or four and five shillings a-piece." 

 An allusion to apostle spoons occurs in a collection of 

 anecdotes, entitled " Merry Passages and Jeasts," quoted 

 by Malone from Harl. MS. 6395 : " Shakspeare was god- 

 father to one of Ben Jonson's children, and after the 

 christening, being in deepe study, Jonson came to cheer 

 him up, and ask'd him why he was so melapcholy. ' No 

 'faith, Ben,' says he, ' not I ; but t have b^en considering 

 a great while what should be the fittest gift for me t^ 

 bestow upon my godchild, and t have resolv'd at last.' 

 * I pr'ythee, what ? ' says he. f I'feith, Ben, I'll give him 

 a douzen good Lattea [Latin] spoons, ^ndi thou shalt 

 translate them.?"] 



Clergy buried with ^pice toward^ thfi West. — 

 The other day, pn visiting thp chapel of St. Ed- 

 mund Hall, Oxford, J observed that the lozenge- 

 shaped stones, on which were ipscfibed the names 

 of former principals, were placed facing the ^e^t, 

 instead of towards tfae east, the j^su^l custom. 



A friend tells me tlaat it is by no means an un- 

 usual practice in tjie ^Torth of Englj^nd to bury 

 tlje clergy ^it};t t}}e face jtpwand^ the we§t, ia the 



manner above-mentiorjed, iq order that they 

 may meet their flocks on the morning pf the great 

 day, and conduct them to the tribunal. Is this a 

 custom peculiar to the North of England ? 



OxONIENSIS. 



[This custpm has been noticed in our !'*■ S. ii. 403. 

 452., where our correspondent wil} find that it is not pe- 

 culiar to the North of England, but has been observed in 

 various parts of Christendom since the seventeenth cen- 

 tury.] 



St. Paneras. — Can you inform me in what 

 church in Exeter there is a brass of St. Paneras ? 

 Also, in what church in Lewes, Sussex, there is a 

 painted window of St. Paneras ? What church in 

 France contains a brass of this saint ? Is there an 

 engraving of any of them ? The Rev. Edward 

 White, M.A., of St. Paul's Chapel, Kentish Town, 

 gave a lecture, " The Life and Times of St. Pan- 

 eras, the Boy Martyr under Diocletian." I want 

 to procure an engraving of that saint ? R. 



[Perhaps the best representation of St. Paneras is in 

 the magnificent brass of Prior Nelond, in the church of 

 Cowfold in the neighbourhood of West Grinstead, of which 

 a lithographic drawing is given in Horsfield's JSistory of 

 Ijcwcs, vol. i. p. 239. St. Paneras, the patron saint of the 

 Lewes priorj', is represented standing upon a pinnacle 

 with a palm branch in his right hand, a book in his left, 

 and treading on a warrior with his jirawn sword.] 



Arms in Severn Stoke Church. — To what fa- 

 mily does the following coat of arras belong ? 

 Gules, a fess between six cross crosslets, or. They 

 are from an old painted wjndow in the parish 

 church of Severn Stoke, Worcestershire. This 

 church has what I think must be a very rare 

 thing, an original stone altar as used before the 

 time of the Reformation. Cervus. 



[The above coat of arms belongs to the Beauchamps, 

 Earls of Warwick. In Atkyns's Gloucestershire we find 

 that Richard de Beauchamp married for his first wife 

 Elizabeth, heiress of Thomas Lord Berkeley. He died 

 17th Henry VI., 1439, and was buried in the Collegiate 

 Church of Warwick. The cross crpsslets are the arms of 

 Berkeley, which he added to his own. The same arms 

 are in a window of Kingsbury Church, Warwickshire. 

 See Dugdalp's If^arwickshire, pp. 391. and 1061., edit. 

 1730.] 



POUND AND MIL SCHEME. 



(2°a S. i, 491.) 



I have taken it for granted, upon the e^uthority 

 of more writers th^ti one, that what is now called 

 the pound and mil scheme was originated by the 

 anonymous Mercator, in The Pamphleteer for 

 1814. I had never seen this work,- but, learning 

 from Me. Yates's communication to you that 

 Mr. Slater had reprinted Mercator in his Inquiry, 

 &c., I examined th.e feprint, and I found that 

 Mercator^S scl^giup is t}pt what ig npyy ftdypcated 



